different anon – (if you’re willling to share,) what do You think thanos torturing loki would look like in regards to your last ask?

veliseraptor:

(had to wait to reply to this until I could get some brain together, so sorry – late response. related, sort of, to this ask.)

I have actually written about this some before! (a lot, it turns out, that’s just a sampling I found with some cursory blog searching.) but I can write out a little here for those who don’t feel like playing follow-the-links.

basically, I think a lot of what Loki went through was a blend of physical and psychological, and initially didn’t involve Thanos very much at all. rather, I think it was a lot of relying on others – either the Chitauri or the Black Order or similar – so that then Thanos could be a counterpoint to that of relative benevolence – so there would be the fear and pain but then also Thanos playing on nurturing Loki’s rage and hurt in the direction he wanted them to go. 

but also a lot of Loki’s position being very clearly very tenuous – we know that Thanos is good at playing people against each other (i.e. Gamora and Nebula) in order to steer them where he wants them to be, and keeping Loki off balance and uncertain is a good way to keep him from planning too much (which is, of course, dangerous). so Loki’s status being deliberately nebulous: not quite prisoner, not quite guest, not quite servant, so that he never knows quite where he stands or what’s safe or what isn’t. (and what’s safe changes, too.)

I can imagine later on, too, when Loki’s already more brought under control, that there is conditioning via pain with the claim that it’s about “reforging”, about making sure Loki can withstand possible torture from someone else, about making him stronger through suffering. and that both serves to break Loki down further so he’s still less stable, and also to make sure Loki’s aware of exactly how much he can hurt. 

it seems likely there was some level of brainwashing/psychological manipulation – the way Loki’s words in The Avengers echo Ebony Maw’s in Infinity War, the seeming shift in his memory about what happened on the Bifrost – so that Loki doesn’t waver in his determination, so that he buys into the mission and becomes safely self-motivated (or at least, that’s the hope). a big part of making sure Loki stays on board is making sure that he doesn’t need the stick to keep on track. he has to want to do what Thanos wants, at least on some level – even as he’s also scared not to. it’s a balance. 

and then there’s forging the mental link between Loki and the Other, which I imagine is a mental torture all its own – if only because it means Loki has no privacy at all, ever, and no real escape. no matter how far he goes physically, he can always get pulled back – and for Loki, people fucking with his head will always be worse than people hurting him physically. 

basically: a lot of confusion, a lot of uncertainty, pain balanced with very poisoned kindness and understanding, manipulation of memory and emotion…it’s a very thorough job, and I think at least at first – and probably to a certain extent throughout – Loki’s aware of what’s happening. but he’s also trapped by his own desperation to believe that he’s in control of himself – so whenever he gets those seeming offers of choice, he lunges for them, even as he knows that they’re choices he’s been steered into making. but he still has to believe he can make them. 

a lot of how I characterize Loki post-Thanos takes into account the ways in which I think his sense of agency has been completely jacked.